President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden are 180 degrees apart when it comes to whether the District of Columbia should achieve state status.
The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives is expected to vote historically on Friday by passing a bill that would make DC a state. The last vote on the state of DC, which was 27 years ago, failed. But the current bill has 226 cosponsors, enough to pass it on camera.
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But the bill is likely to die in the Republican-controlled Senate, where majority leader Mitch McConnell has said he will not bring the measure to a vote.
Biden supports making the District a state.
“DC should be a state. Pass it on, “he tweeted Thursday night as he retweeted a tweet from former South Bend, Ind. Mayor Pete Buttigieg, a rival during the Democratic presidential primaries.
But the president opposes the push.
“DC will never be a state,” Trump told the New York Post last month. You mean the District of Columbia, a state? Why? So can we have two Democratic senators – more Democrats and five more congressmen? No thanks. That will never happen “.
And on Wednesday, the president’s advisers released a policy statement saying they would recommend that Trump veto DC state law if it ever got to his desk.
Democrats have long urged that the 705,000 residents of the District have all the voting rights and all the benefits of statehood because they pay more federal taxes than residents of more than 20 states, and that District residents have struggled in all American wars.
Republicans emphasize that the creation of any new state would require a constitutional amendment, and argue that if the District became a state, it would have undue influence over the federal government. They also claim that DC is not ready to handle the responsibilities of a state.
The District has a non-voting delegate in the House and does not have representation in the Senate. Because DC is not a state, bills passed by the city council and signed by the mayor must obtain approval from Congress before becoming law.
The bill likely to pass the House on Friday would reduce federal government control to a two-square-mile enclave that includes the White House, the Capitol, the Supreme Court and other federal buildings. The rest of the District would be known as Washington State, Douglass Commonwealth.
